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Published: Mar 26, 2021 · Modified: Mar 26, 2021 by Yusuf

Turkish Manti Dumplings

Name: Turkish Manti Dumplings
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients: 1 cup whole wheat flour; 1 egg; 1 tsp salt; ¼ cup lukewarm water; 200g ground beef (90% lean); 1 onion, chopped finely; ¼ bunch parsley, chopped finely; ½ tsp salt; A pinch of black pepper; 1 tsp pepper paste; 1 cup yogurt; 2 cloves garlic, mashed; A pinch of salt; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon olive oil; 2 tsp red pepper flakes or chili, sweet or hot; 1 tsp dried mint; 4 cups water to boil dumplings

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Turkish manti is a food you have to taste! The tiny homemade pastry filled with spicy ground beef, cooked in water and served with a yogurt sauce. That butter sauce on manti dumplings is a to-die-for final touch.

If you are interested in Turkish recipes like manti, you should try our Turkish eggs recipe, which is served with yogurt and spicy butter sauces too. Belive it or not, we love these sauces on stuffed grape leaves dolmas too. They match together wonderfully!

Turkish manti with a yogurt sauce topped with a spicy butter sauce in a white bowl and a spoon inside it.

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What is Manti?
Making Manti Food Together
Ingredients
Manti From Scratch
Tips and Tricks
Other Turkish Recipes
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What is Manti?

Dumplings in Turkish are called manti and it’s one of those dishes everyone craves for every time. A dough similar to pasta dough is rolled out, cut in tiny squares and filled with a spicy groud beef filling. Traditionally, we serve manti with garlicky yogurt and a spicy butter sauce on it. Manti is not only known in Turkey, it is also famous in Chinese, Armenian, Russian, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Balkan cuisines. It has different names in each culture for sure.

turkish manti dumplings stuffed and sealed

It’s not an easy dish for many people, so people may not prefer making it at home. If you insist on eating Turkish manti, but have no time to make it, you can find it packaged at markets. I find them tasteless though, they are no different from pasta and they have almost no filling inside. There are some small bakery like shops in Turkey producing and selling Turkish dumplings, which are better than market versions. If the owner of these shops is an old lady and if she herself makes it, this is even better! But still why not make it at home?

Making Manti Food Together

Well, I admit that it’s a bit time-consuming if you are making it alone, but I can’t say that it’s a difficult dish. It might take hours to make these small dumplings depending on the amount. Time is the real concern here, so Turkish women come together at one of their homes and make it in a teamwork. At least 3 women - sometimes more work together to make dumplings especially for special days like weddings, welcome or farewell parties or family unions. One of them make dough and roll it out, another one cut it into squares, a third one put filling on each square and then they all start to close them up.

Hands holding a bowl of manti with yogurt and spicy butter sauces on a dark background.

Making Turkish Dumplings Manti means more than making the dish itself. Although they serve for one purpose, which is completing the dish, women never miss the chance of having some chat; well, maybe a bit gossiping! And this is absolutely the best solution for time problem! They can hardly realize how time runs when they finally seal the last dumpling!

The best part of making dumplings with some friends is that you have lots of it in the end and you can freeze some for a future cooking! It becomes an easy dish then! Just boil them in water and enjoy with yogurt!

I think teamwork is definitely a must if you are planning to make Turkish Dumplings Manti for a large group of guests, but you can easily handle it yourself if you make it for two of you.

Ingredients

So what goes into Turkish manti dumplings recipe? First, let's talk about the dough. You don’t need many ingredients for manti dough. Flour, egg, salt and water are what you need. We sometimes make it with whole wheat flour, but you can use all purpose flour too.

As for the filling, we need ground beef, onion, parsley and spices. Optionally, we use very little pepper or tomato paste too.

As for the service, we need two kind of sauces. First one is a yogurt sauce with garlic. Second is a spicy butter sauce.

Manti From Scratch

The recipe has 4 folds: Making the dough and cutting it into tiny squares, prepare the filling, fill the squares, cook them in hot water just like you cook pasta, serve with yogurt and spicy butter sauces.

Turkish dumplings dough on a wooden board and a thin rolling pin on the side.

Rolled out dough wrapped on a thin rolling pin on a wooden board.

A hand cutting thin dough into tiny squares with a knife.

Mix flour, egg and salt in a large bowl. Add water little by little and mix with your hand. Knead it well until you have a not very soft dough. You can add extra water or flour to have this result. Roll the dough ball out not very thin, about 2mm. Cut it first into strips and then into small squares.

So many dough squares waiting to be closed up! If you double the ingredients, you feel that you need someone to help you at this stage!

Hands showing how to close up manti dough.

Here starts the fun part! First fold it into two. Then combine all edges. Then you have this bundle like shape. It took me no longer than 15-20 minutes to finish them all!

manti dough squares topped with ground lamb or beef

Cook the dumplings. Heat 4 cups of water in a pot and add dumplings when it boils. Boil them until soften for about 10 minutes. Transfer them into plates with a slotted spoon.

Prepare the sauces. For the yogurt sauce, mix yogurt, salt and garlic. For the oil sauce; melt butter and add in olive oil. Add in dried mint and red pepper flakes, stir. Take it after about 20 seconds.

Pour some yogurt on dumplings and drizzle a little oil sauce over it before serving. We also love to sprinkle a little sumac on it. YUM!

Tips and Tricks

Let the manti dough sit covered with a damp kitchen towel for about 30 minutes before rolling it out.
Use a 90% lean ground beef for the filling to have a better taste and texture.
The ground beef filling shouldn’t be juicy. Otherwise the juice will soften the dough squares and distort the shape of dumplings. So don’t puree the onion. It’s better to chop the onion with a knife.
Close up the tiny manti dough squares as fast as you can. Otherwise, they might dry out as they sit and it gets harder to seal them.
Just like you do when cooking pasta, add a pinch of salt and a drop of oil into the simmering water when cooking manti. They won’t stick to one another this way.
To have even richer flavor, you can add beef stock in the simmering water and then cook the fresh dumplings in it.
Cook the dumplings for about 10-15 minute, not longer than this. Check them after 10 minutes and remove if they are tender enough.

Turkish Dumplings Manti with yogurt in a white bowl

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